Tri-state governors talk

When it comes to building houses, New Jersey and Connecticut are “eating our lunch.”

That’s according to Gov. Kathy Hochul, who doubled down on her housing reform push in New York alongside her tri-state counterparts at a Regional Planning Association lunch Friday.

It was the first time in 40 years all three governors had been brought together for an event put on by the think tank, which is a venerable force in Northeastern politics.

“Failure is not an option,” Hochul said of the importance of building new housing in New York. She vowed to “move forward ambitiously.”

Earlier this week, she recommitted to her hopes of overriding local zoning laws to require municipalities to build hundreds of thousands of new homes across New York state in the coming decade.

The plan, which faced an uproar from many suburban communities already unfriendly to her administration in the last election, was ultimately scrapped from the overdue state budget. Others in Albany are more intent on shoring up affordable housing and tenant protections, but none of it got over the finish line.

“It’s going to take some time, but I’m in this fight for the longer term,” she said. With less than a month left before lawmakers leave Albany, though, coming to a deal on any new housing proposals will be tough.

Senior Biden advisor Mitch Landrieu was also at the lunch, touting the Northeast as a cornerstone of the Biden administration’s infrastructure agenda. The linchpin of those efforts, he said, will be the long-delayed and increasingly expensive Gateway project, a massive commuter tunnel under the Hudson River that will link New York and New Jersey.

He called the project, which won’t be completed until 2038, critical to transforming the Northeast corridor. The Biden administration designated $700 million to it in the federal budget, and construction will begin on the tunnel’s Manhattan side later this year.

“Everybody is like a dog on a bone committed to getting this done,” he said.

From the Capitol

REGULATIONS ON CRYPTOCURRENCY: Fraud, market manipulation, hacking and opaque business practices have caused the massive lossesin cryptocurrency investments.

On Friday, Attorney General Tish James announced legislation — the Crypto Regulation, Protection, Transparency and Oversight Act — to prevent scams and protect New York’s investors and consumers.

The set of regulations included in the bill aims at improving transparency and protections by preventing conflicts of interest, requiring public reporting of financial statements and bolstering investor protections, including reimbursement for customers who are the victims of fraud.

James is hoping to win legislative approval for the measure before the legislative session ends next month.

“Rampant fraud and dysfunction have become the hallmarks of cryptocurrency and it is time to bring law and order to the multi-billion-dollar industry,” James said in a statement. “These commonsense regulations will bring more transparency and oversight to the industry and strengthen our ability to crack down on those that don’t pay respect to the law.” — Eleonora Francica

BACK TO THE LAB: The renowned Wadsworth Center in the Albany area got a major boost in the state budget as it was heavily strained during the Covid-19 pandemic and is in need of new space and upgrades.

The budget includes $1.7 billion to complete “the creation of a new state-of-the-art public health laboratory aimed at enhancing the state’s readiness to effectively respond to future public health crises and retain top-tier scientists,” the state Department of Health, which oversees the center, said Friday.

It also has a new director in Leonard Peruski, who previously worked for 18 years at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevent. The new lab will be constructed on the Harriman Office Campus Complex in Albany by 2030 and will seek to consolidate its various facilities. The state initially allocated $750 million for the project in the 2018 budget, but due to the pandemic and inflation, development was split into two phases and at a higher cost.

The health department said it expects to release designs of the new lab later this month. — Joseph Spector

NATIVE AMERICAN BURIAL SITE PROTECTION: Until Wednesday, New York was one of the four states not protecting unmarked Native American burial sites from developers during home constructions or renovations.

Native American officials asked for almost 20 years for protection to preserve those remains, but the bill never passed both houses, and when it did, last year, Gov. Kathy Hochul vetoed it.

But this year, Hochul changed that by including the Unmarked Burial Site Protection Act in the state budget. The legislation provides for protective measures regarding burial sites, including the requirement for the landowner to stop all activities upon the discovery of human remains, reporting them to the local coroner.

“The state should have intervened decades ago to protect the numerous unmarked burial grounds across New York,” Assemblymember Fred Thiele (D-Suffolk) said in a statement. “This legislation is a crucial step in righting the wrongs of the past by giving these lands the recognition and protection that Native American burial grounds truly deserve.” — Eleonora Francica

From City Hall

EXECUTIVE SESSION: The City Council plans to kick off another round of hearings Monday to examine the mayor’s executive budget released in late April. And members have thoughts.

A chronic staffing shortage in city government has left several agencies — the Department of Social Services among them — short on resources. And with a mountain of issues facing the department from continued homelessness to the influx of asylum seekers, lawmakers plan on prioritizing the agency as the subject of its first hearing.

“[DSS] is a clear example of how the Administration’s understaffing, budgeting and management choices are hamstringing agencies and hurting New Yorkers,” a Council spokesperson said. — Joe Anuta

On The Beats

FAIR HOUSING: About a third of New Yorkers live in highly segregated counties, according to a new report released by Hochul examining housing discrimination in the state.

The report also found 95 percent of Black households live in a county that’s considered highly segregated. And there remain deep racial disparities in homeownership rates: two-thirds of white households own their homes, compared to just a third of Black households and a quarter of Latino households.

The report laid out several “action items” to help curb these inequities, such as promoting affordable housing development in areas that currently prevent it via land use and regulatory barriers — a key piece of Hochul’s wide-ranging housing plan, which she failed to get into the final budget deal approved this week. — Janaki Chadha

HEALTH CARE: About 1 in 4 New Yorkers — nearly 2 million residents — had lost at least one person close to them to Covid-19 by mid-2021, according to new city data.

Almost 900,000 New Yorkers lost three or more people. Those rates were even higher among New Yorkers deemed essential workers, and they were higher still among essential workers from communities of color. — Maya Kaufman

EDUCATION: With New York school aid hitting a record $34.5 billion this year, education leaders are disappointed to see the sides didn’t find a mere $1 million to study how to revamp the state’s antiquated foundation aid formula that determines how the huge sum is distributed, POLITICO reports.

The Education Department requested $1 million to look at how it can update components of the formula, such as the use of 2000 census data and the lack of weighting for English Language Learners and special education students. Gov. Kathy Hochul’s budget proposal in February made no mention of the study, but both the Senate and Assembly sided with the Education Department in requesting the funding in their one-house budgets However, the money never made its way into the final budget.

Education department officials said the department doesn’t have the capacity to do the study without the money it requested. They said without the funding, minor tweaks could be made. But without a full study, they can’t make more impactful changes. — Katelyn Cordero

NYCHA: Nearly a year after state leaders approved a new public housing preservation trust to help fund upgrades at NYCHA, Mayor Eric Adams and the housing authority have appointed six members to a new board to oversee the effort.

The proposal signed into law last year allows NYCHA to transfer public housing apartments to a new public benefit corporation, known as the trust, giving the agency the ability to tap into federally-funded rental vouchers to pay for repairs and access bond financing.

Adams and NYCHA interim CEO Lisa Bova-Hiatt announced six appointees to the board that will control the trust, including two public housing tenant leaders — Karen Blondel of Red Hook West Houses and Barbara McFadden of Nostrand Houses. Bova-Hiatt, the city’s chief housing officer Jessica Katz, NYCHA’s chief financial officer Annika Lescott-Martinez, and Baaba Halm, a vice president at Enterprise Community Partners, will also sit on the board. — Janaki Chadha

Around New York

— Via THE CITY: Carbon Capture Debuts in NYC Buildings But Won’t Count Toward Climate Law Mandates, Yet

— The MTA will boost its weekend and night services this summer. (WNYC)

— An internal agency report from the NYC Department of Correction obtained by the Daily News shows officials couldn’t explain why they delayed fixing its sprinkler system before a fire injured almost two dozen. (New York Daily News)

— Buffalo, Rochester and Syracuse are among the U.S. cities with highest percentages of food stamp recipients. (Upstate New York)